DDT is famous for bioaccumulation: insects absorbed it, animals ate them and absorbed their accumulated DDT, and then animals further up the food chain ate those animals, until hawks and eagles were experiencing deleterious effects despite having never been directly exposed to the stuff.
So what’s the deal on modern agricultural pesticides and herbicides used on farms these days? Are they also prone to bioaccumulation, but we’re OK because they’re used in smaller amounts? Or will my flesh dissolve by the age of 50 if I continue to eat fruits and vegetables produced by modern industrial agriculture?
I’m not an expert, but I do know that some modern pesticides/herbicides actually break down into other chemicals over the course of a month or two, so if applied in, say, June by August they’re entirely gone, degraded, and washed away.
Some other chemicals used on the farm, such as ammonium nitrate fertilizer, can be quite hazardous in concentrated form (a few years ago a thief on a farm near here burned his feet off after he got stupid with a tank of ammonium nitrate) but diluted and used as fertilizer is considered relatively benign (and certainly good for the plants)
So, to some extent, this a bump